Construction of chimeric viruses based on pepper mild mottle virus using a modified Cre/loxP system

Cre/loxP, a site-specific recombination system, has been widely used for various purposes, including chromosomal translocations, generation of marker-free transgenic plants, tissue-specific activation of a reporter gene and efficient heterologous gene expression in plants. However, stable or transient expression of Cre recombinase in plants can cause chlorosis or necrosis. Here, we describe a modified Cre/loxP recombination system using a DNA fragment flanked with loxP sites in the same orientation in which necrosis induced by Cre recombinase in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves was alleviated. The modified system was successfully used to create functional GFP-tagged pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV) and a chimeric virus with coat protein (CP) substitution assembled from separate pro-vector modules. Our results provide a new strategy and flexible technique to construct chimeric virus and infectious clones for plant viruses with large genomes.